Depending on interpretation, if a modern director is to accurately put the Russian classic, "The Cherry Orchard," to the stage, then he would be doing a disservice to the playwright, Anton Chekhov, if he chose to perform the play as a tragedy. The fact that the play undertakes various moral decisions should in no way restrict an audience from experiencing the light-heartedness and folly that also ensues. Likewise, any forward-thinking reader of Alexander Pope's, "The Rape of the Lock," should not be surprised that the conventional epic subjects of love and war are undermined by the author's mock-heroic style. Even though the works are of dissimilar mediums, they bridge together the gap that distances them by cultivating subject-matter that is universal: class-distinctions. Early on in Chekhov's play one of its most ambiguously complex characters, Lopakhin, reveals the awkwardness of his new status as part of the nouveau riche: "My father was a peasant, it's true, but here I am in a white waistcoat and yellow shoesà a pearl out of an oyster"(2). Similarly, at the outset of Pope's poem, lines 7-8, in no uncertain terms, quickly provides the reader with its characters highbred coterie: "Say what strange motive, Goddess! could compel/ A well-bred lord to assault a gentle belle"(2235)? Class lines, and those who may or may not choose to cross them, might seem to be a perfect packing agent for these two works, but in reality Mr. Chekhov's play and Mr. Pope's poem have in common precious little, not just in the element of style, but in overall execution. However, because every character, in both pieces, has a preoccupation with his final condition, it can be argued that both authors sought to exploit a certain universal quality inherent in the fabric of man.
Before being privy to that singular partiality in which the works have in common, what is conspicuous to the reader are their differences. To be utterly simplistic, one of ...